


Chin up, Éponine

by yourfriendlyneighbourhoodme



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: so I tried to give her better, Éponine deserves better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 04:33:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11959812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourfriendlyneighbourhoodme/pseuds/yourfriendlyneighbourhoodme
Summary: Éponine Thénardier has been through a lot, but this is all about the good that she finds herself surrounded by now. A day in the life of Éponine with her supportive friends, fantastic job, and general all-round wellbeing.





	Chin up, Éponine

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, and welcome to my attempt to bring goodness to the life of Éponine, because she deserves so much better. Thank you for reading :-)

Éponine wakes naturally with a smile on her face, squinting slightly at the sunlight streaming in through the yellow curtains that hang at the window. The room is filled with light, and for a moment she just lies there, listening to the distant hum of the traffic down on the street below. She stretches her arms high above her head, as though reaching for the flowers painted on the ceiling. 

Checking her phone, resting on the bedside table, she sees that her shift at work starts in two hours, leaving her enough time to start the morning properly, without rush or bother. 

She swings her legs over the edge of the bed and rises gently, brushing her tangled hair out of her face and picking up her headphones as she moves out of the room, plugging them into her phone and selecting the ‘Morning!’ playlist. 

Her feet tap a gentle rhythm on the worn wooden floor of her apartment as she puts the kettle on with warm music filling her ears, and eventually she begins to hum along too. This new song is one recommended to her by Cosette, and it fills Éponine with a kind of hopefulness for the day ahead. 

She clears away some glasses from the night before and sweeps the already pristine floor whilst she’s waiting for her tea. 

When the kettle finally boils (it’s pretty rubbish in it’s water boiling duties, but hey, she can’t have everything), she’s listening to her favourite morning song, one that Feuilly used to sing to her when he woke her up in the mornings during university. She lets Daydream Believer play twice, murmuring her own name in place of Sleepy Jean’s as Feuilly always did.

She takes out her headphones as she wraps her fingers around her favourite flowered patterned mug that is slightly chipped from the time that Bousset knocked it when trying to wash it up, and drinks her tea in silence, the warmth filling her stomach and making the tips of her fingers tingle. 

In the fridge, she finds the remains of the waffles she cooked yesterday, and allows herself an extra helping of maple syrup which sticks her teeth together and makes her laugh into the calming quiet. The sugar begins to wake her up properly, and she washes up the crockery smiling out of the window that is over the sink, watching early risers catch buses, sip large mugs of coffee and bump into each other. 

Once Éponine has managed to scrub the last of the sticky syrup from the plate, she puts it and the mug gently in the rack to dry, and then decide to head into the bathroom for a shower. The bathroom is warm, her new apartment having fantastic radiators, and she happily gets into the quick flowing stream of hot water which washes away all remaining cobwebs of slumber. 

The towel is warm when she gets out the shower and the room smelling sweetly of her apple shampoo, a smell which trails behind her as she pads back to the bedroom to get dressed. 

From her wardrobe, she selects her cleanest pair of black jeans, comfortable yet practical, and a soft blue blouse which Musichetta chose and always insists brings out her eyes. She partially towel dries her hair then pulls on some socks patterned with pandas (probably originally belonging to Feuilly, but since stolen by her) and walks into the kitchen, grabbing the watering can from the packed bookcase as she goes. 

When out on the balcony, on which Éponine has a small forest of potted plants (most of them courtesy of Jehan), she takes care to water them all, especially the rose which was looking a little peaky in the autumn sun that shines over her when she leans out over the railings, laughing down at the street below. As she’s on the eighth floor, she’s high enough to give her that little bit of an adrenaline rush when she looks down at the ground and lets out a hoot, but not high enough that the people below don’t hear her, and a young girl with plaits waves at her. Éponine waves right back, hoping the girl can see her smile, then returns inside and shuts the doors to keep out the cool morning breeze, because although it’s sunny it’s not especially warm. 

Humming a tune to herself, she conducts a quick clean of the apartment, putting DVDs back in cases and straightening cushions, remembering fondly how it’d been the previous night when all her friends had been packed into the tiny living room, laughing and throwing popcorn at each other. On the coffee table she finds a handwritten note from Marius, thanking her for the evening, signed by all the others, and she doesn’t even feel that gut wrenching feeling when she sees his name. Her friend’s name is just that: that of a friend, as easy to see as the name of Enjolras or Joly. 

This reminds her to thank Cosette for the song recommendation, so she fires off a quick text to her before moving back into her bedroom to grab a jumper, figuring she may as well make the most of the rest of her morning off. 

Éponine takes the stairs down two at a time, calling hello at the one neighbour she passes on her travels downwards. He seems rather baffled by her, but calls a greeting nonetheless. Her ankle boots make a satisfying clacking noise on the stairs which somehow further bolsters her spirits, and she checks the mail quickly, receiving only boring advertisements and then, making her hands shake slightly, a letter written in elegant, spindly handwriting which she recognises as Montparnasse’s. 

The letter is brief yet heartfelt, containing a promise to come back and visit her soon and no less than three (not-so-subtle) inquiries after Jehan, which make her laugh as it reminds her of Jehan’s behaviour the previous evening. Montparnasse sends his love to her in his guarded, closed way, and she knows that he means it, and pockets the letter with a smile on her face. He’d even included a picture of himself frowning slightly less than usual on the beach, which he must have bullied a random passerby into taking for him. 

The advertisements she shoves in the bin on the way out the building.

When the chilly breeze hits her, Éponine is glad that she thought to wear her scarf, which she pulls up over her nose as she heads down towards her favourite book store that is only a few streets away. It’s a vaguely hipster place that Grantaire first brought her to that has a fair-trade coffee shop attached to the side and is ironically called ‘Liber-Tea’, from the Latin for 'book' and the owner’s desire a word filled with equal rights and terrible puns. Enjolras, surprisingly, despised the man, a fact which often reduced Grantaire and Éponine to fits of giggles. 

The employee working this morning nods at her in recognition when she enters, and Éponine returns the sentiment before heading through the rows of shelves to the section she’s looking for, the section that feels most like home. 

At university, people were often amazed that Éponine had held such an outside-of-lectures interest in her subject, and that she chose to spend all her time buried in astronomy books, but the whole subject had fascinated her and still did. With her current job, she could afford to buy more books, but during her course had instead spent hours in the library, which was where she had met Combeferre, who had been reaching for a book just as she’d plucked it off the shelves. Combeferre had seen her reading for weeks in interest, simply lacking the courage to talk to her, and from then they’d established a rota of meeting for coffee and discussing their most recent reads. 

And, ah hah! There it was! The newest of Combeferre’s endorsements, which Éponine had been looking for for a few weeks. Looking in her purse, she realises she’s got just enough cash for it, and as she’s getting paid tomorrow it isn’t a problem. It’s luxury Éponine is not used to, but very fond of. An extra muffin or cookie with her coffee sometimes makes all the difference to her day, and the freedom it brings is sometimes overwhelming. 

She takes it to the counter, and the the employee is talking to the owner, who recognises her as one of his most faithful customers and gives her a discount which she tries to refuse but can’t, the warmth of his grin being as it is. He also hands her a wrapped book which he tells her to pass on to Grantaire, the owner knowing that the two of them are friends. She thanks him warmly and then leaves the shop and continues on her way to the park, where she settles herself down on her bench overlooking the pond. 

A few ducks quack at her in greeting and she laughs as she sets a timer on her phone and lets herself be lost in the book. 

Half an hour later, she packs up and heads back out of the park and towards work, a steady job as a research astrophysicist at the local university, which sprung suddenly out of an internship she took last summer. She’d got the internship because of Cosette’s father, one of the law professors, who had pulled in a few favours, but she was happy to say that she’d got the job all by herself. The job she loved was now hers, and a massive step up from the poor paycheck she’d received from long hours at the art supply store. She’d loved that job, it had given her money and time with Grantaire, but she’d been glad to move on. 

All of her friends had taken her out to celebrate when she’d heard the news, albeit with teasing about her genius and Big Bang Theory living scenario (complete with broken elevator and hot girl next door). Bahorel had baked her the largest cake the world had ever seen, had spent hours decorating it with planets and Montparnasse (in town for the occasion) had even cried a little, spluttering about how proud he was. He denied all memory of it afterwards, of course, but Éponine still held the memory in her heart. 

She gets the same jolt of excitement as she always does when entering the lab, a sense of belonging which warms her through. Sometimes she thinks that she’ll wake up back in her first week at university, broke again and eating Feuilly’s rubbish cooking, but she keeps coming back to her dream job. At the moment, she shares her experimenting zone with another scientist, a warm woman called Fantine who always has a smile for her, but Éponine hopes that one day she’ll have her own office, with her name in a fancy plaque on the door. 

Just like every other day, a routine she loves, Éponine throws herself into her work happily, and is proud of herself when she figures out a complicated math problem that had been the bane of her existence for two days now. 

On her lunch break, she receives a call from Courfeyrac checking that she’s still free for this weekend, and she reassures him that yes, she is. It’s Combeferre’s birthday and Courfeyrac was into mild panic mode, as was to be expected, but she manages to calm him down and gets him laughing before she has to go back into the lab. Her present for Combeferre (a large book explaining the basics of film criticism) is safely wrapped and stored under her bed, and has been there for months. 

The afternoon flies quickly as it always does, time seeming to run differently in their windowless room, and Fantine is reminding her with a kind smile that her shift is over before Éponine knows it. She's surprised when the clock agrees with her colleague and tells her that the time is approaching half five, so she packs up quickly and catches the train home, thankful for the station close to her flat as she really doesn't fancy the walk today. 

On the train she bumps into Joly, who shoves a jug of fresh lemonade into her hands and tells her to enjoy before instantly disappearing at the next stop, leaving her and a few other passengers laughing quietly over the rumble of the train. Attached is an invitation to dinner written in Bousset’s neat writing. 

Opening the door to her flat is rather difficult with the lemonade in tow (and she’s infinitely glad she didn't bump into any neighbours with such a strange cargo), but she manages it without any awful spillages (thank goodness, no one would willingly waste anything made by Musichetta) and puts the jug safely in the fridge. Deciding she need not head out again that evening, having done plenty shopping yesterday, Éponine lets her music play gently through the speakers then wraps herself up in the thick blanket that Gavroche knitted for her at school when he was twelve, setting the new book on her knees and losing herself again. 

At seven, Gavroche rings with more exciting stories from university, his voice warm and familiar. He’d left Éponine and Paris to study veterinary in Brittany nearly two months ago, and although she missed him she knew he was deeply enjoying his course and the independence it provided. That, combined with Montparnasse’s promise to check up on Gavroche if he was passing through the area, made Éponine worry a little bit less. 

She laughs with her little brother for nearly an hour before she shoos him away from the phone, insisting that he go out partying, or whatever it is young people do these days. He complains mildly, teasing her that she’s only 26, but tells her that he’s got plans (safe and responsible plans) with his friends. He makes her promise not to worry, then hangs up. 

Éponine decides it’s time for dinner and movies, and heats up a casserole that she finds in her freezer, thankfully left by Enjolras (not Feuilly) by the messy scrawl on the label. Enjolras’s cooking is to die for, and although she’s no idea how he managed to leave it there without her noticing, Éponine is very grateful and sends him a picture of her eating it on her sofa to tell him so. He responds with a few smiley faces and a picture of himself and Grantaire eating what must be another batch of the exact same casserole, which makes her laugh as she turns on the film. 

The film of choice is one of her favourites, a rom-com which she originally saw with Courfeyrac. They both sobbed through the entire movie, and Courfeyrac often begins to cry if you just mention the film. Éponine, who is nothing if not consistent, has to dig out tissues from underneath a stack of magazines because her sleeves just do not soak up as many tears as you would think. She even digs out some ice cream from the freezer and eats it happily from the tub with the largest spoon she could find. Then she texts Courf a picture of the screen and he immediately sends back a selfie of him lying on the floor, captioned ‘why would you remind me????’. 

It is dark outside when the film has finished, and she closes all the curtains with the lights off, enjoying the calm darkness of her apartment before brushing her teeth and crawling into bed. 

She falls asleep to the gentle sound of the night rain hitting the window, and sleeps through till morning, warm under the thick covers.


End file.
